Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!

Monday, January 6, 2014

Alan Singer, Mixed Feelings on Fariña, de Blasio

.... as far as I can see, Carmen Fariña has closer ties to the top 2% income
bracket than the other 98% of the population and has always been
willing to play political games... It remains unclear to me what Fariña has to offer the working class and
poor Black and Latino students who have been left behind in the
Bloomberg years....Alan Springer, HufPo

I've been presenting a variety of views on Farina, both pro and con. This Alan Singer piece at HufPo is pretty much con. Here he raises an interesting issue. Was Farina's success at PS 6 due to her attracting wealthier white parents or improving the lot of the struggling students?

She was principal at PS 6 on Manhattan's Upper East Side where the zip code is 10028, the median household income in 2011 was $107,895, and the population is 83% White. Fariña worked at PS 6 when Anthony Alvarado
was Superintendent of Community School District 2 and achieved
supposedly miraculous school improvement by offering special programs
that attracted Manhattan's wealthy and professional families to the
district's schools. PS 6 became a very popular school with New York's
economic elite and benefited from being a Columbia Teachers College
Mentor School, having close ties to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and
receiving Annenberg grants.

Wasn't that the mantra of the Bloomberg years? Make it look like education was improving by changing the kids -- the essence of what they did by chopping large schools into smaller ones, screening out the most difficult kids from the smaller ones and sending them down the line to the next large school in the daisy chain, or domino effect.

Fariña started as a teacher at PS 29 in tree-lined Brownstone Brooklyn located in the 11201 zip code where the population is 60% White and the median household income was over $91,000 in 2011.

I'm not sure of this is a fair point given that Farina taught at PS 29 at a very different time. Singer should have given is the 11201 zpi code stats when she taught at PS 29, not 2011. (I'm too lazy to check them myself but I remember Cobble Hill as not being a gentrified area at that time.

Carmen Fariña first worked with Bill de Blasio when she was District 15
Superintendent in Brownstone Brooklyn and he was on the school board.
It remains unclear to me what Fariña has to offer the working class and
poor Black and Latino students who have been left behind in the
Bloomberg years.

By the time she came back to District 15, many areas were in full gentrification mode. Thus the charge that the Lucy Calkins model would only work with gentrified kids in large classes and a level of arrogance that teachers who could not manage the feat of making it work were below par.

Fariña was also a Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning during
the Bloomberg/Klein regime where her reputation as an advocate for
children gave legitimacy to their programs. I only met
Carmen Fariña once, at a social studies teachers' conference in 2006.
We exchanged a few words and I expressed disappointment that Fariña did
not speak out more forcefully for good education. At the time
Bloomberg and Klein were trying to force secondary school teachers to
use an inappropriate elementary school lesson format called the Workshop
Model. Fariña's office maintained that New York City had no
standardized lesson plan format, but that did not stop the DOE from
enforcing one. Soon after our encounter Fariña
quietly retired as deputy chancellor, suspected of using her influence
to help a colleague who lived in New Jersey illegally place his child
at PS 29.

The latter point was the Leo McCaskill, principal of Brooklyn Tech, story and that would require an entire blog post of its own. Sort of unfair of Singer to make the automatic assumption that this is why she left, but certainly might have been a factor.

Goodbye Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As you can probably guess from my very critical Huffington Posts during the past four years, I am not sorry to see you go.

Hello Bill de Blasio and Carmen Fariña. A lot of my friends in public education have high hopes for your tenure as mayor and school chancellor, but based on your previous performance I really do not expect much to change. I hope you surprise me.

The New York Timesestimated that it cost Michael Bloomberg $650 million to be Mayor of New York City for the last twelve years. They praised his generosity to aides and non-profit organizations and his ability to remake the city. What they left out is that the $650 million was actually a great business investment helping to vastly increase Bloomberg's fortune by promoting Bloomberg's global brand.

In September 2013 Forbesestimated Bloomberg's net worth at $31 billion, up $6 billion in one year and up $26 billion from $5 billion when he was first elected mayor in 2001. Bloomberg is now the seventh richest person in the United States and 13th richest in the world.

The Times also minimized the high cost citizens pay for the “philanthropy” of Bloomberg and the other billionaires. During the last decade their money has undermined democracy in the United States, promoted programs that escalate social inequality, and remade cities to provide for their comforts and needs. How much will social inequality expand and the Bloomberg brand be worth as Bloomberg Associates spreads his influence around the planet?

But Mayor Mike is gone. Billy Dee and Carmen will now being running the city and the schools.

Bill de Blasio talked up progressive rhetoric and the tale of two cities during his campaign but the reality is that he is a longtime main stream Democratic Party operative. De Blasio worked in the Dinkins administration in New York City, the Bill Clinton Administration in Washington DC, and Hillary Clinton's campaigns. His early appointments are mostly traditional Democrats. Laura Santucci, de Blasio's chief of staff, was an Obama aide and former acting executive director of the Democratic National Committee. Lis Smith, his communications director, is the current girlfriend of disgraced former Governor Elliot Spitzer. Alicia Glen from Goldman Sachs is Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development. Gladys Carrion, his Commissioner for Children's Services was originally appointed to public office during the Koch administration. She was commissioner of the Community Development Agency in the Dinkins administration and headed the state Office of Children and Family Services under Governors Spitzer, Patterson, and Cuomo. She has a long resume, but not one marked by great accomplishment and improvement for children or the poor. Corporation Counselor Zachary Carter was a Bill Clinton appointee as a federal district attorney and has ties to Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign and Cablevision.

Two of de Blasio's most important appointments are Bill Bratton as police commissioner and Carmen Fariña as School Chancellor. Bratton was formerly New York City police commissioner under Rudy Giuliani where he targeted squeegee men. He promises to pursue aggressive police tactics but claims to be reborn as an opponent of the controversial stop and frisk. We will see.

Public school advocates have especially high hopes for Carmen Fariña because she is one of our own, but I feel we will be disappointed. In announcing the appointment, de Blasio said "We cannot continue to be a city where educational opportunity is predetermined by ZIP code." He added that Fariña would help all children realize their potential.

But as far as I can see, Carmen Fariña has closer ties to the top 2% income bracket than the other 98% of the population and has always been willing to play political games. Fariña started as a teacher at PS 29 in tree-lined Brownstone Brooklyn located in the 11201 zip code where the population is 60% White and the median household income was over $91,000 in 2011. She was principal at PS 6 on Manhattan's Upper East Side where the zip code is 10028, the median household income in 2011 was $107,895, and the population is 83% White. Fariña worked at PS 6 when Anthony Alvarado was Superintendent of Community School District 2 and achieved supposedly miraculous school improvement by offering special programs that attracted Manhattan's wealthy and professional families to the district's schools. PS 6 became a very popular school with New York's economic elite and benefited from being a Columbia Teachers College Mentor School, having close ties to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and receiving Annenberg grants.

Carmen Fariña first worked with Bill de Blasio when she was District 15 Superintendent in Brownstone Brooklyn and he was on the school board. It remains unclear to me what Fariña has to offer the working class and poor Black and Latino students who have been left behind in the Bloomberg years. Fariña was also a Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning during the Bloomberg/Klein regime where her reputation as an advocate for children gave legitimacy to their programs.

I only met Carmen Fariña once, at a social studies teachers' conference in 2006. We exchanged a few words and I expressed disappointment that Fariña did not speak out more forcefully for good education. At the time Bloomberg and Klein were trying to force secondary school teachers to use an inappropriate elementary school lesson format called the Workshop Model. Fariña's office maintained that New York City had no standardized lesson plan format, but that did not stop the DOE from enforcing one. Soon after our encounter Fariña quietly retired as deputy chancellor, suspected of using her influence to help a colleague who lived in New Jersey illegally place his child at PS 29.

Will de Blasio/Fariña schools be substantially different from Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott schools? As Randy Newman sings in the opening to every show in the Monk detective series, "I may be wrong now, but I don't think so!"

Post-It Note: In my last Huffington Post of 2013 I offered to meet with Bill de Blasio and his school chancellor to discuss the future of New York City schools. I know he has been busy, but I am disappointed I did not from him. Anyway the offer still holds. Bill, please email me at catajs@hofstra.edu and we can set a time and place.

3 comments:

I remember Carmen when she was a principal. I remember the nineties when principals in Manhattan district 2 were given the power to eliminate any teacher f or any reason. One reason was to eliminate the tops salaries and so the principals like Ms Farina threw the top veteran teachers to the dogs. Also, the district had bought into magic elixir materials, and top down mandates for lessons, like word walls, and materials replaced the successful lessons that experienced CLASSROOM PRACTITIONERS had used to successfully enable learning.

The emphasis on EVALUATING TEACHING replaced the FOCUS OF THE PAST, which was ENABLING LEARNING. Thousands of educated, experienced, dedicated PRACTITIONERS of THE PROFESSION OF PEDAGY (yes not mere teachers) BIT THE DUST because the union looked the other way when it cAME TO ENFORCING THE CONTRACT. Hearings became a sham and investigations of bogus charges, became a sham. A real journalist needs to look into Marlene Malamay's role at Special Investigations. in order to see the hidden agenda that allowed principals to deprive teachers of DUE PROCESS.

LET'S SEE IF CARMEN is ready to do the RIGHT THING by our students and do her role as ENABLER and FACILITATOR OF LEARNING. Maybe she has learned a thing or two from the destruction that Cortines, Crew, Klein, Fink and Company wrought.

D 15 is much more than Brownstones. It goes as far as Red Hook and Sunset Park where children live below the poverty line. There is also an large Hispanic community within D 15. The area around the district office did become gentrified when I was there, but many of those buildings were own my middle class, hard working Italians.

d15 is not just gentrified. It has different pockets of neighborhoods as well, that are below the poverty line or working middle class. I think that if any chancellor (with educational experience) was selected, such as Kathy Cashin, Josh Starr, it would be posed with resistance and criticism too. One thing that must be remembered, is that good administrators who get the job done, retain teachers, train and supervise teachers with clear direction and communication are not easy push overs. Majority of the good administrators are tough with a hard work ethic. However what makes a good administrator, a really GREAT administrator is by being FAIR and know each teacher's strengths and weaknesses.

Comments are welcome. Irrelevant and abusive comments will be deleted, as will all commercial links. Comment moderation is on, so if your comment does not appear it is because I have not been at my computer (I do not do cell phone moderating).

UFT Election Vote Comparison: 2004-10

A Personal Historical Perspective

Why Karen Lewis Reads Ed Notes

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Hedges says, There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history.

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

GEM's Julie Cavanagh Debates E4E member on NY1 on LIFO and Seniority

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy TysonProfessor of African American Studies and HistoryDuke University

A Familiar Voice on Unions

"We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike"- Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Outsource our children

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

Teacher Value-Added Data Dumping by Norm Scott

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

From Sharon Higgins

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Video of Chicago's George Schmidt and CORE Shredding Arne Duncan and the Chicago Corporate Model

Great Post on Teacher Quality at the Morton School

I'm very tired of the myth that schools are bursting at the seams with apathetic, unskilled, surly, child-hating losers who can't get jobs doing anything else. I recently figured that, counting high school and college where one encounters many teachers in the course of a year, I had well over 100 teachers in my lifetime, and I can only say that one or two truly had no place being in a classroom.